


The Ghosts of Christmas Past

by palimpsestus



Series: Hidden in His Coat Is His Tin Right Hand [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Christmas!, F!SS/Nick if you squint, F/M, Gen, Pre Relationship, because i only do angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 13:19:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5498471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palimpsestus/pseuds/palimpsestus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nora loved Christmas. Loved the family coming round and the snow on the ground, loved the food on the table and the presents under the tree. </p>
<p>There is none of that in the Wasteland.</p>
<p>*endgame spoilers*</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Ghosts of Christmas Past

**2074**

“And who’s this beauty?”

The Bostonian was drunk, slurring his words and missing the railing the first time he tried to lean on it. He beamed at her with broad cheeks and a low, troglodyte brow. Blue eyes glinted beneath red eyebrows and Nora found herself smiling back at him, leaning against the rail as well. “Does that line ever work?” she asked and heard a small chorus of boos from inside the boathouse. A bet had been lost, she thought.

Her companion fluttered his eyes at her, as amused as she was by the reaction of his friends. “I’m an optimist,” he said, and then he transferred his Gwinnett pale to his left hand and extended his right for her to shake. “I’m Nate.”

His grip was pleasingly firm, no-nonsense, she thought. No strength testing, no coddling of her delicate fingers, just a meeting of equals. “Nora,” she said warmly, returning the handshake with a smile. She nodded to the gentlemen standing by the bar, watching them and laughing with one another. “I think your friends expected you to flame out here.”

“Yeah they never believed a gorgeous gal like you would give me the time of day,” Nate responded quickly, his smirk somehow making the trite line amusing and she found herself laughing, and he laughed with her, a genuine, brassy belly laught that was infectious. “You have a great laugh,” he told her when they had subsided.

“I could say the same for you. So are you gonna buy a gal like me a drink or do I have to sit here and die of thirst?”

The Revere Beach Christmas party had always been a highlight of the college’s social calendar, and while the band played and her friends danced, she sat out on the boardwalk with the loud laughing and quick witted Nate. She almost didn’t feel the cold, or notice the fifth rendition of ‘Let it Snow’ from the band, because his stories were quick and many, and his jokes sharp. When he learned her career plans he sat forwards, resting his elbows on his knees, and said with that ever present hint of laughter in his voice, “In my experience only two types of people become lawyers. Old money looking to protect the family silver, and do-gooders. Which are you?”

She affected nonchalance, shrugging her shoulder beneath her thick woollen overcoat. “Well, old money, of course,” she said, stressing the long vowels of her inheritance, and he laughed, but watched her carefully. She got the impression he was figuring her out far faster than she was figuring him.

When the band wrapped up and their friends began to say goodbye, he asked “Can I walk you to your station, or to home?”

“I can’t,” she said, with honest regret. “I have to drive upstate, to see my parents.”

“Hmm,” he nodded, watching her with those blue eyes. “Well, that’s a shame. Merry Christmas, Nora.”

“Merry Christmas, Nate.”

He took a step closer to her and her heart hammered. “Nora, may I kiss you?”

“I think we could allow it,” she breathed, and leaned up into the kiss, marvelling at the softness, the chasteness, of a man so wickedly cunning. “I’ll see you in the New Year?” she whispered as they parted.

“Count on it,” he murmured, and he gave her a look like she was a present under the tree on Christmas Eve, to be opened in the morning. “Can I walk you to your car, at least?”

“Sure,” she managed, and they walked to the waiting Corvega Atomic, and he said nothing about how new it was, or all the extra features, and held the door open for her as she climbed inside. She hit the road with Nate in her rearview mirror, framed by the falling snow.

 

 

**2075**

She closed the snap of her garter on the stockings and caught sight of herself in the mirror, standing on the balls of her feet, clad only in her lingerie, with her hair done in rolls, eyes lined black and lips stained brick red. “I look ridiculous,” she muttered, and turned back to the bed where her options lay before her. The first, a classic navy pencil dress she’d owned for years, the dress she wore to interviews, the dress that Nate complimented every time she put it on. It was a sensible dress. It was a modest dress. And damn she looked good in it too.

Nothing wrong with old blue, nothing at all, which made the second option all the stranger. The fact she had walked out in the snow to buy it, much to Nate’s bemusement. She had hidden the box it had come in, couldn’t let him know it was no Fallon’s off the rack dress. The full skirted red satin number was more expensive than six months’ rent in their tiny but extortionate apartment. She hadn’t bought it, of course, they couldn’t afford it in a month of Sundays, but all she needed was her mother’s name and the attitude. Her mother wouldn’t even bat an eye at the price when she got the bill. She’d think Nora had come to her senses at last. That her daughter had finally decided to stop this rebellious streak and come back to the family.

Nora’s fingers trailed down the satin skirt.

Their tiny apartment had a bedroom, a bathroom, and a small kitchenette-living room that could barely fit a sofa. She stepped out from the bedroom in the red dress and watched Nate’s jaw drop.

“It’s too much isn’t it,” she said immediately, clocking his chinos and thick knitted sweater. “It’s okay I can change.”

“We’re already a little late,” he began tentatively as she dashed back into the bedroom. She heard his step on the boards and turned as she wriggled out from the dress. His gaze followed the slip of the fabric down her shoulder and she shook her head.

“Don’t look at me like that if you don’t want us to be late,” she snapped, pointing to the navy dress. “Pass me that.”

“Honey,” he reached for the dress, “You really don’t have to go to all this trouble. It’s just my folks. You could just throw on some slacks.”

Tugging the skirt over her hips, she stopped to glare at him. “I am absolutely not spending my first Christmas with your parents in slacks.”

Nates eyes were glued to her hips as she brushed her palms over the fabric to smooth it. “Honey, all anyone cares about at my folks’ place is how much turkey you can stuff down your face.”

She waggled a finger at him, checking her image in the mirror once more. “Are you sure the InstaMash is the only thing your mother wants us to bring? I could have got real potatoes. Maybe I should have . . .”

“Honey,” Nate caught her elbow, smiling that smile as he drew her closer.

“We will definitely be late,” she began, to be silenced by him awkwardly reaching around to his back pocket. “What…”

“I was going to do this at dinner, but I think that you might die, if I asked you in front of my family.” He removed a small blue box from his pocket and flicked the catch, parting the halves easily to reveal a simple gold band. “And I’d like you to come to every family Christmas we have, until you feel like you can show up in your loosest slacks and fight over the Salisbury steaks with Uncle Jim.”

Nora had the strangest sense that she might faint, fall to the ground in a swoon, and that Nate would head off for Christmas without her.

An unusually sombre expression passed over Nate’s face and clasped her hands. “And if I don’t come this year,”

“Nate,” she said quickly, pressing her palms against his cheeks, all thoughts of fainting chased away. “You _will_ come home.”

“I want you to have my family. God knows yours isn’t any good.”

In the end they were late, but his family didn’t seem to mind much at all.

 

**2076**

Mrs Harrison pursed her lips around the silver tip of her cigarette holder and inhaled, blowing a curl of smoke up towards the chandelier as she surveyed her son-in-law. Nora could feel her fingernails digging into the bannister, watching her husband tug uncomfortably at the tight neck of his dress shirt beneath his tuxedo.

“We ought to have got a tailor,” Mrs Harrison said ruefully. “Might have made him look a little less like a Jangles the Space Monkey.”

“Momma,” Nora scolded as loudly as she dared. On the top step of the grand staircase she was a good foot or so taller than her diminutive mother, but she couldn’t bring herself to speak any louder to the old witch.

Mrs Harrison flicked ash into the tray held by the hovering Mr Handy. “Really, darling, I could just about cope with you playing house with the soldier but to actually go and marry him . . .” she tutted loudly. “It’s a bit much, even for you.”

“I love him, Momma,” Nora reproached.

“Ha,” she scoffed, reaching up to pat her hair as though a single strand could ever have dared escape its regimented rows. “My darling! You are so young.”

“Not so young anymore, Momma.”

“Oh lord is he speaking with Roger? Dear God I hope he has the sense not to say anything.”

She watched her husband trying to rub shoulders with the Massachusetts elite, abjectly miserable, though he would never admit it, while Mr Handys and Protectrons milled around with champagne flutes, crowned with tinsel. Nate had only suggested once that they abandon her parents’ strongly worded invitation in favour of the small house in Quincy that his entire family would descend on tonight. She had shook her head ruefully. It was easier to pay your dues early, she’d always learned, and after the wedding she had dues enough to pay.

“Well no one can say my parties aren’t diverse,” Mrs Harrison was saying, “Poor Roger talking to a chap from Boston! I wonder that they can even understand one another.”

“Oh, Momma, really, we’re all human after all.”

“Well you would say that, darling,” her mother gave her a knowing look. “I blame myself, sweetheart. We coddled you too much as a child, never showed you what real people would do. You need to know who you can trust in this world. You need to know who your people are. And I can tell you exactly what tribe your Nathaniel belongs to. And it’s not yours.”

She could hear the grinding of enamel in her ears, her molars pushing into one another. “That may be true,” she managed, “But it’s the tribe I choose. Mother.”

Her mother regarded her, lips pursed, cigarette still glowing on the end of its holder, her gloved hands artfully curled around the bannister. A picture of grace and elegance, as ever, as deadly as a viper. “There’s the truth of it,” her mother said archly, and looked back down at the party below. After a moment, she sighed. “You are my only child, darling,” she said, stubbing the cigarette out and turning to face her. She reached for Nora’s hand, the velvet of her gloves soft and smooth.

Nora felt her fingers close around her mother’s, wished that she wasn’t led up to the hallway, wished she had the courage to turn away, to take her husband and leave, but she didn’t. She simply followed her mother down the long hallway, into the master bedroom, and sat on the low green ottoman at the foot of the bed at her mother’s bidding. It was like she was a child again. She smoothed her red satin skirts and watched her mother fiddle with the drawer in the vanity, the lock sticking as it always had. She wasn’t sure why her mother bothered. She’d been able to shimmy that lock since she was five years old. But then Mrs Harrison had always had an unerring faith in the laws of propriety.

“I wasn’t sure what kind of a Christmas present one gets a daughter who runs off to get married without telling anyone. The kind of daughter who refuses good matches for a man like your Nathaniel.”

Nora twisted her hands together in her lap.

“I thought perhaps you might like to work, and Aldous Luxington would have made an opening in his firm for you.” Mrs Harrison pulled something from the drawer and turned to face her daughter, holding a white envelope in her hand. “But I knew you wouldn’t accept that. It would go against your much lauded principles.” Nora said nothing and her mother managed a tight sort of smile. “I do listen, you see. So in the end, I thought, what might a mother give her only child, who hates all her mother ever tries to do?”

“Oh, Momma!” Nora cried. She glanced away from her mother, at the painting hanging on the wall above the fireplace, a dark, dreary thing of her parents. She remembered how frightening it was as a child, the lifeless faces of her mother and father staring down at her from on high.

“So I thought, if her damned fool of a husband goes and gets himself killed, and worst comes to worst, there’s one thing I want. I want my daughter to have something that’s her own. For any children she may have.” Mrs Harrison’s gaze fell to Nora’s hands, clasped in her lap, and the envelope began to quiver in her gloved hand.

“What are you saying?”

“There’s a little development.” Mrs Harrison thrust the envelope out in front of her. “The land was actually owned by old Peggy Carlton, so your father heard about it, and I was able to call in a few favours. The money is nothing to us, and it’s all in your name. No conditions.  It’s even in a Vault catchment area. It’s called Sanctuary Hills.”

Nora found herself on her feet, her fingers closing around the heavy parchment.

“If you don’t like it you can always sell it,” her mother announced with a shrug. She waved her hand to dismiss the words Nora couldn’t find. “And take the money. Spend it on some needy causes, whatever you do.” She met Nora’s gaze for a heartbeat and then her eyes flicked upwards, to that point above Nora’s head that she always looked to, as though she was picturing her own broken dreams above her daughter. “Do come and rescue Roger from your ape whenever you get a chance,” she finished, and turned for the door.

Nora gripped the envelope tightly, listening to the faint sound of her mother’s heels on the deep pile of the carpet outside.

A house. When Nate came back from his next tour he could come back to a home. They could . . . she pressed the envelope against her stomach, her mouth feeling dry.

She held the envelope tightly as she returned to the party.

 

**2286**

“He’s the most advanced model yet, and I believe his time in the Commonwealth did him good.”

“But . . .” Father prompted.

Li shook her head. “The complexities of a human brain, of real human feelings, all we can ever produce is a pale imitation. He struggles to form emotional bonds, he hasn’t missed Kellogg at all, although perhaps that says more about your instrument than the project,” she trailed off and turned her attention back to the windowed room where the boy was dismantling a clock. “He doesn’t miss any of his carers. He’s just not . . . human. He doesn’t have that capacity.”

“Hmm,” Father folded his arms until he felt the twinge of pain in his chest. Does he have the ticking time bomb in his bones, too? He thought, but didn’t voice. “Thank you for the report, Dr Li.”

“It might be easier if I knew the purpose of this experiment.” Li watched him, her smile peculiar and reserved.

Immortality, my dear Dr Li, he thought, and instead smiled back at her. “Curiosity, my dear Dr Li. Excuse me.” He cast one last look at the boy, his dark hair and slight frame. Did that all come from his genes, his own perfect, unmutated DNA, that couldn’t repair itself any further? What more could he give the synth but his own flesh and blood?

“Happy Christmas, sir,” Dr Li called out, almost as an afterthought as he reached the door.

“Oh, of course,” he said, muttering some quaint platitude as he headed into the corridor. The smiles and the respectful nods from his community were their own kind of exhausting, and he reached his quarters pained and aching. He lowered his too-frail body into the chair and breathed shallow and slow, the terminal in front of his gaze swimming.

There’s so much still to do, so much of the world left to restore. He needed more of his flesh. More of his blood. He was a foolish old man if he thought he could get more of that. A man only has so much to give.

The thought preyed on his mind.

 

**2287**

She watched the date on her pipboy tick over, and whispered ‘Merry Christmas’ to herself, too low for MacCready beside her to hear, but enough to make Dogmeat prick up his ears at her feet.

A wave of nausea swept over her as the Geiger counter clicked furiously and beside her, MacCready huddled further into his overcoat. The pair of them were sitting behind a dirty, half crumbled kiosk, backs against the panelled wall, boots braced on the foot of the counter. MacCready had his arms tightly folded, trying to keep himself warm as the radstorm raged outside, his chin sagging against his chest. His long rifle sat between his knees, the stock nudging against Nora’s thighs, heavy and solid. A cold reminder of the reality of the world she found herself in.

Dogmeat lifted his head, a growl low in his throat, and Nora had her hand on her pistol, MacCready’s rifle lifting just a tad.

“Ho, ho, ho,” the newcomer called, a moment after Dogmeat had already relaxed, and she lifted her head enough to greet Nick as he came in from the storm. “Who’s been naughty and nice?” The synth was moving slow and low to the ground, just in case the raiders who had pinned them before the storm hit were watching from their camp.

“Rads fried his circuits,” MacCready managed, his head dropping again. She felt her own strength ebbing.

Nick crouched down beside her, his unflinching gaze studying MacCready. “He’s not looking so good.”

She shook her head. If she spoke, she might find her nausea was winning out. Nick settled down beside her, his back against the counter so he was facing her. Dogmeat laid his head on the old synth’s lap, and his good hand automatically went to the dog’s ears, scratching gently. “Found some radaway when I was scouting,” he continued in a low voice.

“Just like Santa Claus,” she coughed.

“Just like,” he sounded amused. “Sleep, Nora. I’ll keep watch.”

She shook her head, and regretted it. “Can’t,” she murmured. “Too sick.”

“You want the radaway now?”

“Think this storm ain’t finished yet.” She tilted her head back against the wall and swallowed roughly. “No sense wasting the stuff.” And she glanced over at MacCready, shivering and shaking. The rads were hitting him hard. His overcoat might have been warm but it was poor shielding. Not that her leather armour was much better. “Raiders?” she asked.

“Bunkered down by the big house. I don’t think they saw me. But they’re planning on moving the moment the rads settle. So you should sleep. If you can.” The yellow eyes burned into her in the darkness.

She nodded and closed her eyes, but sleep was never going to come for her. Not tonight.

A hand settled on her ankle and her eyes shot open, in time to see Nick studiously look the other way, his heavy fingers circling her ankle all the sympathy he would give her tonight.  She crossed her arms tightly over her belly. “What was your first Christmas out here like?” she whispered.

Nick glanced at her. For the two months or so they’d been travelling together he’d easily become a close confident. She thought he would have been even if he wasn’t her only path to Kellogg, and her only link with the old world. “I used to love Christmas,” she added, playing just a little on the damsel in distress. She was beginning to make out the nuances of his facial expressions, the twitch of a cheek, the spark of his eyes. Right now, his sympathy was winning out over his privacy.

“I wasn’t cold,” he said after a moment, his fingers loose around her ankle. He turned his head so he was staring at the wall and she could study his battered face with impunity. “Lived all my life up here. Knew in my bones what that cold feels like, every winter, but the first winter out here? It was like . . . plunging your hand into a boiling hot bath. You know it’s hot, but all your limb can sense is the damage. I was still at the settlement that had taken me in, still trynna figure out myself. Trynna get used to  . . . yellow eyes . . . staring at me in the mirror.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, earnestly, even if it came automatically.

Valentine shrugged. “It had been a hard season at the settlement. There wasn’t much going around. But they did what they could. Don’t feel sorry for me, doll.” And he squeezed her ankle again.

“How long did it take you?” she asked after a moment. When he looked at her, she tried a smile, knew it was a pale imitation of the one she used to wear. “To have a good Christmas again?”

Nick reached up to tweak the brim of his cap with one hand, pulling it lower so she had a harder time of looking into his eyes.  As if his eyes revealed much anyway. “A while,” he admitted. “But it happened. One year.”

In this place? It didn’t seem possible. She closed her eyes as the rads spiked again. “I might hold you to that, Valentine,” she murmured.

“Hold me any way you want to,” the old synth retorted, sly and teasing, and she felt her smile tug at the corners of her lips.

 


	2. And Christmas Future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It comes good again

**2289**

“Little boys who don’t tidy up their messes won’t be visited by Santa Claus,” Nick announced, picking himself up from the floor and returning the biometric scanner that had fouled him to the pile. Crouched by the charcoal fired stove, Nora glanced over her shoulder in time to see Shaun try to help the situation, snagging at one of Valentine’s spindly fingers and causing the detective to stumble again, until Shaun sat back on his heels and apologised, while Dogmeat bounced up on his hind legs to send Valentine crashing to his ass.

Nora hid her chuckle by returning her attention to the pie crust in the oven. Charcoal was a tricky mistress to work with, as likely to burn her attempt at a mutfruit pie as to leave it raw on the inside.

“That’s okay,” Nick was saying, “Guess I should be watching my feet.”

Shaun giggled as he began collecting the remnants of a dozen machines from the living room floor. “Who’s Santa?” he asked.

“Who’s . . .? Oh boy,” Nick’s surprise was too much for Hancock, sprawled on the sofa and sleeping off whatever high had brought him to Sanctuary. The Mayor of Goodneighbour began to laugh, coughing on his seared vocal cords. Nick had drawn the attention of most of the Christmas guests, Shaun and Nat sitting at his feet with eager faces, Piper and Preston giggling away in the background, while even Codsworth, hovering behind his young master, seemed to be waiting for Nick’s explanation.

“Well he delivers presents to all the little children,” Nick was saying, sounding profoundly unsure of himself, “And I think Nuke Colas too, or maybe that was the Nuka Cherry ads. Anyway.”

She bit her bottom lip hard, easing the oven door open a little to reduce the heat for her pie.

“He probably has to do a lotta Jet to get through all the kids in the Commonwealth in one night,” Hancock mused, which sent Nick into a stammering feedback loop, while Shaun and Nat launched into a hundred questions.

Nora studiously ignored the frantic looks those glowing eyes were sending her and busied herself with the makeshift Christmas pudding. Once upon a time she would have tried her utmost to keep the likes of Hancock from her family, but once upon a time was so very long ago. She could almost hear her mother’s prim snort as Hancock was now elaborating on a particularly blend of Psychojet he’d happened upon in Quincy one time. Shaun was laughing so hard he was snorting down his nose, and Nat was tugging at Nick’s trouser hem, “But what if there are no chimneys?”

She eyed the mutfruit pie. The fruit was bubbling and purple, the edges of the pastry only a little darkened. All in all, damned good effort.  She considered riding to Nick’s rescue, but had to admit she was enjoying the sight of him squirm as his tales of Santa Claus were increasingly complicated by Hancock and Deacon’s teasing. She drifted towards the crowd, folding her arms and leaning against the door to the carport. Nick glanced up at her and she made a slight head shake motion. You’re on your own.

Besides, it was good for him to spend more time with Shaun. He was cautious around the kid, afraid of revealing Shaun’s true origins, she thought. That was the kind of thing Nick would worry about, in the pig-headed way he had of believing that if he worried about it, she wouldn’t. He’d taken it upon himself to give her a wide berth in front of her son, and she couldn’t say she disagreed. Her and Nick raised too many questions that she wasn’t ready to deal with, not even in the privacy of her own thoughts, never mind with Shaun’s sharp mind.

Not to say that the distance didn’t get compromised. Unless he was in Diamond City, or on a case in the Wasteland, he would spend the night in her bed, only to slip away long before Shaun would come bouncing in in the morning. Apart from that one morning he’d had to escape out the window, and Shaun couldn’t understand why she was in fits of laughter.

She could feel herself smiling at the memory. That was a conversation they were going to have to have one day, and one day soon.

“Mom!” Curiosity satisfied, Shaun was up and launched himself at his mother, wrapping his skinny little arms around her waist. Her hands went to his back and she held him close. “Did you ever meet Santa?”

“Yeah!” she said, ruffling his hair. “Coupla times!”

“Was I lying?” Nick demanded, letting Nat pull him to his feet. “I’m guessing you kids won’t want any of this amazing pie then?”

“No, we do!” Nat cried.

Shaun looked up at his mother again and she winked. “I’m sure I made enough for you,” she said, and bent to kiss the crown of his head.

“Merry Christmas, Nora?” Nick said as she straightened up.

She smiled. “Merry Christmas, Nick.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Christmas!


End file.
